


The Colours of StaCa

by SenkoWakimarin



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-13
Updated: 2015-11-13
Packaged: 2018-05-01 09:52:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 4,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5201501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SenkoWakimarin/pseuds/SenkoWakimarin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of one-shot ficlets centered around Starscream and Carrion. Ratings and themes vary.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. White is the Colour of Advice

White is the color of the lights in the med bay, when they’re actually turned on properly. Carrion knows this because he’s spent enough time staring up at them, plating folded back, while Knock Out tries to repair some minor damage to his chassis.

“Now, I know that a great many of the more artistic designers died in the war, leaving the sad engineers that put your sorry self together,” the older medic purrs as he looks up from his work, distracting Carrion from the clean white of the ceiling, “And I know that the only ‘Cons who would bond long enough to produce offspring aren’t the brightest – again, leaving your procreators. So I know that, through no fault of your own, you’re both stupid and ugly.”

He heaves a long suffering sigh that’s only half sincere, unwilling to give in to Knock Out’s bait when the other is wrist deep in his innards. “Feeling witty today, are we?”

“Don’t try to be smart; you’re far out of your league,” the other chides, raising a sharp claw to flick Carrion’s face plate. The gesture is much sharper and stings a bit more than if Starscream were doing it, and the difference is interesting. “Honestly, do you think this is doing any good for you?” He gestures with his raised hand at the rest of Carrion’s body, sweeping over the dents and scratches and peeled away paint; to the exposed wires and broken pumps and smeared energon. “Do you really think destroying yourself doing something you’re absolutely _terrible_ at is going to get you anywhere? Do you think it impresses anyone?”

Rolling his optics, he returns his stare to the ceiling. “I do my job just fine, thanks.”

“When you chose to do what you were built for,” the ostentatious automobile states smoothly. “Instead of flying around doing what you like to _pretend_ to have been built for. No one is fooled; not even your dear Air Commander.”

Generally speaking, Carrion is very accomplished at the verbal fencing they engage in whenever he’s forced to come down to Knock Out’s corner of the ship. Those words, however, hit in just the right way to slap him into silence, so he can only glare at the other medic.

Returning to his work, grinning as unsubtly as ever at what he surely thinks is victory, Knock Out adds one last murmur before joining his patient in silence. “Just something to think about, you know,” he says. “I do so get tired of seeing you on my operating table.”


	2. Red is the Colour of Wanting

Normally they fly when the sun is fully up, the light giving them a better view of the terrain without the extra effort of switching into night vision. But sometimes the Air Commander insists on drilling routines at night, or early enough in the morning that is may as well still _be_ night.

Because, Starscream insists, there may well come a day when they are called into battle under less than favorable circumstances. He brooks no argument and accepts no excuse for Carrion’s early ineptitude when it comes to flying in the dark.  He simply pushes him to try harder, to go faster; get back in the air and try again, foolish scrapling.

This is all right with Carrion, who expects nothing less from the brilliant mech that has so enamored him. He appreciates the strain, even as he complains; he welcomes these arduous early mornings because it’s always just them, and he _is_ learning. He’s never had anyone spend enough time with him for his processor to really sync with a lesson that wasn’t medical.

But when the sun starts to rise, and the sky bleeds through in shades of red and gold, he’s not thinking about the lesson anymore. He’s watching his Commander, soaring in alt-mode  or standing in his regular form; red light making his sharp features all the sharper, making him look somehow more dangerous and strong as he glares at Carrion.

Keep moving, he’ll snarl if he catches the young jet staring, and Carrion will. He’ll do anything Starscream asks, despite protesting, because when he sees the older mech awash in the red light of early morning, his spark clenches with something he can’t define, and all he wants is for the Air Commander to see him, too.


	3. Orange is the Colour of Passion

There was nothing natural about the color orange. Maybe once such things had grown on the home planet, but Carrion had no memory of Cybertron at all, much less the specifics of its flora. No, his earliest memories were the black of space and the cold steel of the station where he'd been imprinted and begun his education as a medic, then later as a soldier.

Earth is a planet of many colors and seasons, but Carrion rather enjoys the one humans call ‘autumn’; when the plants begin to die and the greens and golds turn to orange and brown. To him, orange is a special color, the color of change.

He remembers flying with his Commander, newly bonded and out together alone for the first time. It should have been as it always had, the older jet leading, barking orders, laying out a regime of maneuvers for Carrion to practice, but somehow it became a chase, a... a sort of show, for his benefit. Starscream has always be a beautiful flier, always in perfect control of himself, but that particular day he'd been in better form than usual.

The leaves of the trees below them hadn't been the standard field of green that day, no; they were a tapestry of livid reds and brilliant golds, fading greens and, most specially of all, burning oranges.

The sight of so much orange was foreign and beautiful, and Starscream was all steel-blue and grey above it. Somehow he'd _known_ Carrion was watching, had seen it or heard his halt or felt it through their bond, and for a moment they'd both been hovering, hanging still in the air, and then the Air Commander had burst into action. So aggressive had the motion been – the impulse felt through their bond heated and violent in a way that was tantalizingly fearsome –  that Carrion had turned tail and fled.

For what good it had done. He might well have remained still. Starscream could read him like a book, chasing at his heels, hedging him in, cutting him off; he met Carrion at every twist, finally pining him on the ground in the midst of those trees; great tall strong trees that rose around them, some dwarfing even them.

Over the duration of the chase – and Starscream had allowed it to go on for nearly a cycle – their com-link had remained silent. Now Starscream spoke, his voice low and dangerous; “Nowhere to flee, sparklet. Will you stand your ground?”

And Carrion had dug his talons into the turf, feeling the soil and shed needles of the enormous evergreens rearing over them, and he'd shivered in place as Starscream had prowled toward him, looking for any opening, anyway to escape.

When the larger jet lunged, Carrion ducked under an arm, laughing wildly as he lept into the air again only to find himself caught and hauled back down to the ground.

“Wrong choice,” the Air Commander growled, dragging the young jet in close. “I thought you'd figured out not to run from me by now.”


	4. Yellow is the Colour of Attraction

The sun of this system is yellow and warm, heating their armor as they twist and circle in this well-practiced dance of mock combat. This is training at its worst, Carrion often thinks, because the forms they rehearse rely entirely on one’s opponent being in precisely the matching position for an attack to work.

But centuries have taught him nothing but patience when it comes to Starscream and his practices; he swoops and dodges and spins as the dance requires, picking up the pace at his Commander’s cue so they’re flying by one another at dangerous speeds.

Maybe it’s the hours of training they’ve put in, or maybe it’s just the sun and heat, but he tightens a turn just slightly too far so his wing grazes Starscream’s claws, filling the air with a low screech of metal scraping metal.

It could be that it’s the heat that makes them behave this way, but suddenly the pattern is gone; Starscream dives at him and he barely manages to spiral out of the way, turning an unsteady barrel roll that throws him downward. He’s so distracted trying to keep from spinning out and crashing back to earth that he doesn't even notice the larger jet turning a tight inside loop and doubling back on him.

His wing stings from the marks left by his own slip up, Starscream's claws having raked a series of jagged lines into the sensitive metal. His engine snarls in his chest as he turns midair, just quick enough to see the Air Commander launching at him; he throws himself up, accelerating just in time to miss being grabbed; this is more like battle, the same uncertainty and feverish need to think in motion. This is training, he thinks as he turns hard into a pitchback; he can feel Starscream's confusion at the maneuver, his irritation and the underlying pleasure of the chase.

It goes on for some time, breems passing unremarked as the dances reaches a full fervor, their labors no longer perfunctory or scripted. Neither knows what the other is like to do, and their excitement stirs something, each in the other, that keeps them running when lesser mech would have called for halt.

Again and again they circle and dive together, erratic and unpredictable, missing striking one another by bare inches. Then, as if scripted, they met in midair, both reversing thrust just enough not to truly crash, and their claws locked as inertia threw them into a rapid revolution and gravity began dragging them down.

Nothing had ever been quite so exhilarating as that barely controlled fall, and they'd no sooner hit the ground than Starscream shoved Carrion back, using the remnants of the energy that had borne them down already, and knocked him to a sprawl on the hard-packed desert ground. There was no time to roll away or get his feet back under him; his wings hit the ground with a painful slam and the younger jet was immediately pinned, Starscream kneeling to straddle him with one hand wrapped around his throat.

“Now you're dead,” he sneered, and Carrion could feel the larger seeker's engine through the faint vibrations in his hand, pressing to his neck. There was a moment of stillness, not even the wind seeming to blow.

“Well,” Carrion finally breathed, allowing himself the faintest smile as his hands relaxed against the dirt. “I suppose it's a good thing you like me so much, huh?”


	5. Green is the Colour of Spirit

Not every Decepticon has red optics, but it is the norm. And that is what Starscream thinks of first when he recalls their meeting – his humiliation was over shadowed only by the shock of those wide, vividly green optics. He thinks of those optics often, so fundamental in reading the temperamental young mech.

Because Carrion could be rarely keep his emotions in check, at least as far as his face went. Starscream can see every tick and tock going on in the younger bot’s mind just by catching his eye and holding his gaze. And Carrion, witlessly obedient as he so often was (in spite of how he tried to pretend at being oh so very disobedient and self-concerned) let him see, met his eyes when ordered to. Maybe it was one of those foolish gestures of affection the younger bot tried to inject into their relationship, or maybe it was that he honestly didn’t know better.

Whatever the reason, Starscream wasn’t about to correct him. As it was, he could anticipate every shift, every flitting flux of Carrion’s emotions. He would always have the upper hand, in any and every conflict they might get into, and that was the way the Air Commander liked things best.

And so he recognizes it when Carrion starts slowing down. It’s common in all of the soldiers. Starscream can spot the signs like they were storm clouds over a pregnant battlefield: the quiet bog that a mech sinks into, the hard angles of the posture, the wavering motions of no stasis. First, Carrion struggles with it. Then he simply falls under, but he’s learned the trick few others have and keeps walking forward.

Seeing the dead skip beside the living would be less disturbing, honestly.

“Go rest,” Starscream tells him. Then, later, “You’re talking to me, but you’re not really speaking. Would you like to explain now, why I won’t listen to you?”

But Carrion is clever. He knows the answer and he knows that Starscream knows, so he says nothing. Just clutches the computer console, leans forward on his arms, and shakes his head. He rests on the scouting maps he had worked so hard to create. They mean nothing to him now, and because they don’t, they mean nothing to Starscream.

Starscream says, “Don’t,” but knows it means nothing to the dead.

(Much later, when the Air Commander digs his fingers into a tightly clenched jaw and twists it so he can kiss Carrion properly, when he can hear him creak to a rest in their shared quarters for the first time, he wonders if he’s trying to save the young jet or bury him.)


	6. Blue is the Colour of Healing

It should be green that he thinks of when he bothers to dwell on his mate. Green is the color of his dramatic armor, and green is the color of his flashing optics. The little fool was most vain of his unique optics, though not so vain as to talk about them.

But it is blue that Starscream thinks of, when he does bother thinking about Carrion. The steel blue of his own paint, the contrast of which Carrion seemed so fond of when placed against his other colors, or Carrion’s own. The azure tones of Earth’s sky, which complimented the small jet’s colors, highlighting him as he pulled some stupid stunt in mid-flight. And especially the brilliant flashes of blue lightning that ran through the young mech’s spark, snapping and spreading and dispersing through the brilliant white.

So it is blue he chooses to remember Carrion by, when he carefully places the other’s mark on his paintjob. It is a subtle change from the steel tone of his shoulder plate; subtle enough that when dry, the paint will only show when the light hits in just the right way.

It feels strange to mark himself with the name of a mech that he didn’t kill; the practice seems almost morbid as he puts the finishing touches on the angular mark, as if he’s bragging about his mate’s demise. As if he’s glad.

Perhaps the bravado implied is what strikes him as funny; he’s not really sure. But there is something, as he waits for the new paint to finish drying, that crosses his mind and pulls a little smile on his face. He’s alone in his quarters, so no one can see, and that makes it okay to give in to that smirk. His spark, which has felt crushed and small since Carrion slipped away, relaxes just a little bit, and he thinks that maybe living through this won’t be as wretched as it seemed before.


	7. Indigo is the Colour of Promise

As ridiculously pointless as it is, Starscream muses, there’s a certain something about poetry.

Starscream is too analytical for poems. In high school, he hadn’t understood what moved a person to emotion when reading them — even to his old self, in his processor, verses have always been sorted into irritatingly broken sentences, cliché descriptions and nonsensical comparisons. They’re supposed to convey feelings, but language is a depressingly faulty vehicle. They bring nothing to him. Not joy or regret or envy. Garbage. A waste of time in the middle of a hectic, furiously paced war that doesn’t look like it’s ending anytime soon.

It’s hard to find a moment to breathe.

“It’s because you have never had anyone read it to you,” is what Carrion protests, following Starscream’s heels. It’s like having a dog. A very tall, bright-eyed dog who speaks like he’s singing, who — from the first moment the young jet had settled on the Nemesis to aid the war effort, as he stepped into the room and lifted that sharp gaze — saw something in Starscream. Something that brings him back even after Starscream has snapped at him, even with the stone fortress built in between Starscream’s dark eyes and his sentiments, should they exist.

Sometimes Starscream wants to strangle him in his sleep. Most of the time he just hides.

“If you have enough air to talk, you should be helping me figure out a new attack plan,” Starscream says wearily. He gestures angrily with the tablet in his hand, but the weariness of avoidance blunts the motion. Carrion wordlessly pulls out the seat for him, and it’s a sign of Starscream’s exhaustion that he sits without an argument. “Words – your damn mouth – it’s a crutch. Poetry is not what I need.”

“You need rest. You need words to lull you out of this over-clocked tension,” Carrion says. He shifts, tracing claws over his Commander’s wings. “You need me, to get that rest.”

His voice sounds like water over rocks. Sunlight flitting over leaves. It’s not poetry; it’s just the truth. Starscream tries to figure out how it works but his brain can’t handle it; sometimes the bond overloads it and he gives up at least on this.

“Sounds like you just want an excuse.”

“Right now,” Carrion says, “you are the one in need.”

“I haven't got time for your drivel—”

Carrion’s fingers are tight around his wrist; unyielding. “Tight now, I am the harmonious one. I am a clear singer. I am a serpent,” he says, optics darkening, sultry around the word Starscream isn’t quite certain of. “I am love. I will indulge in feasting. I am not a confused bard driveling.”

The world is caught in Starscream’s throat for a moment and he curses again, again, that simple words can do this to him. Turn everything upside down. That voice. Those optics. This mech. It’s so stupid. So… illogical. Even being in the same room makes Starscream feel like he’s standing on his head.

Carrion has plenty of words. Starscream can’t seem to find enough, ever, when he’s with him.

“I can work and listen at the same time,” he says instead of screaming. He can’t bring himself to look directly at the smaller jet. “You still now multitasking, yes? Take what you can get.”

“I take nothing, my lord,” he says, purring the title like it’s something more. “Only give.”

Carrion’s fingers gently remove themselves from the tangle about his wrist. The seam between wrist and hand tingles. Starscream tucks it back under the fold of his arms over his chest.

“Needlessly.”

“There is always need,” Carrion says, and then he speaks.

And damn it all to the Pit, but Starscream’s claw hovers silently over the console, unmoving for the duration. It is like a spell. It is—

“Too long are the days between us, that stir and long for the remnants of your presence. I seek the morning’s clarity, the sallow arch of the sun to remind this devastated soul that it won’t be long until I see you again.”

If he closes his eyes ― if he doesn’t —

Carrion’s touch is a brand on his shoulder, a mark on the earth. “You are like foundation my feet yearn to return to, as a home, as the stretch of the world, and yet also the bruised, indigo depths of the sky I cannot reach. If there were no melody, no fiercer beauty in all eternity, I would be content to simply be; you are the flicker in shadows that takes away my need for sight.”

Starscream is a coward for staring down at the computer consol. His hands, he notes absently, are clenching the edge of the counter.

“Don’t,” he says. “It’s idiotic.”

Carrion laughs, the warmth from the exhale burying itself in the back of Starscream’s neck. “It does not please you, Lord Starscream?” His arms come around Starscream, resting lightly on his hands. They relax incrementally, too still, too warm. “Perhaps something… straightforward? Uncouth as it may be, if you would.”

“It’s not necessary.”

“You are sharp and bleed me,” Carrion says. “You are my moon in an empty sky. Your laughter, your silver tongue, I would steal them. You are noble, and not. You are cold and beautiful. You bring armies down. You bring my spark to my throat.”

This is more dangerous. Starscream twists in his hold, trying to turn away. “Don’t. Don’t.”

“No? Then… ah, I know.”

It is because he uses all the words, Starscream thinks, that Starscream can’t find any of his own.

“How you save me. Don’t leave,” Carrion imprints into his shoulder blade, mouthing, near inaudible. “I have no words for you. I love you. I love you.”

There is a certain something, Starscream believes, about poetry.

It is useless. He can’t understand it. Words are simple things; easily misunderstood and thrown around like shattered toys. A mech can’t trust words. Can’t eat consume them, or synthesize them, or bond with them, or fall in love with them. But when it’s a voice soft and heady at your back speaking them, low with prophecy, thick with worship, alive with an indescribable current, it’s easy to forget these simple facts.

So Starscream reaches up and pulls Carrion’s chin down. “Shut up,” he says, and in the silence and gentle brush across his mouth, Starscream hears everything he needs to know and more.


	8. Violet is the Colour of Grief

“Welcome home, Commander,” Carrion says as the door hisses shut behind Starscream’s back. It takes two full kliks, both shuttered and tight, between the moment he hears that voice and when his eyes meet the tired green of Carrion’s from across the darkened room.

For a moment, all Starscream can think is that his armor his heavy. His wings drag on his spinal struts. There is dust built up in the seams of his armor, once so regularly parted for those clever green claws. The claws of a mech who, by all rights, is dead.

 _So this is what it feels like_ , he thinks, his spark twisting and seeming to rise in its chamber, pulling him towards the smaller jet.

A thousand vorn ago, he might have been softer, might have lost it when Carrion died. A thousand born ago, he was but a scientist living on beautiful Cybertron, wishing for a better world with no dream of command, no aspirations or goals to strive for. No rank to climb, no dark Energon piercing his spark.

Time claimed its price. His smile had slipped away, gotten lost in the makeshift graveyards he has left behind, in the bitter violet skies he’s flown and the ugly flow of Energon that has sloughed the dry rust of the old world, and there’s so much weighing him down that he thinks for a moment that he won’t be able to move no matter how much he wants to. But then it doesn’t matter, and any words bubbling in his chest are knocked away from the arms crushing him, and Carrion is five steps ahead of him (as always in these matters) and he clings to Starscream like all the pounds have melted away.

Carrion smells like slick polish and dry desert.

Starscream closes his optics, sagging for a moment against the smaller frame.

“Thank the fuckin Pit,” is what Carrion says, and it’s hoarse and real and so beautiful that Starscream wishes he we younger, wishes he were something _less_ , so he could give in and allow the urge to cry.


	9. Black is the Colour of Success

Carrion remembers the first time he isn’t afraid in battle.

The mud is caked between his fingers, wedged against his knuckles and inhibiting the integration of his cannon back into his arm — he hasn’t cleaned up for what must be days now, can’t imagine becoming any less lethal no matter how much dirt and Energon and general filth curls around his frame anymore.

Once a killer, always a killer, dull blade or not. He’s there in the dark, swaying in the night, pretending he’s not probably going to die in the next few minutes. Trying to hold onto something elusive and bitter, a thought he’d had after waking that he’s carried here with him but can’t grasp now that adrenaline has swept into his arteries.

Out there in the pitch black, he can hear footsteps shuffling. Behind him, a thousand Eradicons are breathing down his neck. The rain hovers over them, threatening, more than what’s out in front of them.

He remembers it all like a snapshot that doesn’t fade because this is where Starscream turns, crisp and demanding with his words, to ask Carrion what they do if the rain comes. Fighting in rain is shit. He should know by now. But Starscream has a plan for everything; he’d made this plan, he’ll have another, and after that another yet.

But the rain can fall and drown them all, sweep him away, because Starscream turns and Carrion is there beside him, a weary presence he’s felt for weeks now, still and hard and ready and eyes full of the eager hunger Starscream’s all too pleased to reach for — and not for the first time, Carrion feels a surge of gratitude that this particular much is on his side. At his side.

Carrion catches his optics; smiles a bit. His denta are white in the bleakness.

“Well, sparkling?” Starscream asks, eyes bright. “Are you ready?”

“No. Can we start over again?”

“Let me consult with the enemy.” Starscream laughs, low and quiet. “So: what if the rain comes?”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t know that,” Starscream says, though he’s not sure if that’s true. He believes him, anyway. It’s just words. Just noise.

“It won’t,” Carrion repeats, soft and confidant and finally put of his fear and with a war before them and a thousand Eradicons behind them, he kisses Starscream in the dark and no one knows the better.

It’s cold and quick, but Carrion holds onto it for as long as he can. In this dark, there are some things that don’t need to mean anything. Things that remind a mech that an engine that revs and jumps in his chest. And when he stands to charge, he forgets for a single moment that there’s anything he can’t defeat **.**


End file.
